‘Last Exit’ – TG’s answer to the Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’. Opens with a sampled American commentary on nuclear survival and a conversation over a two-way radio.

“Fuck off / Fuck off cunt… / And then he hit me with a brick… / Right under the poster / And I fell in the mud / I said ‘Don’t kill me’ / Then he hit me with a brick / Then he hit me with a brick again / Then the blood went out of my cheeks / Then the blood hit the ground and it mingled with the mud / The blood and the mud mingling under the poster / And I looked up at the poster / I looked up and saw the poster / It was a picture of Prince Philip / Prince Philip was fucking the Queen / Prince Philip was fucking the Queen / And the Queen was going ‘Again, do it again, Philip, please Philip, fuck me Philip’… / Got on the Central Line / Came up to these two kids / And the two kids kicked me in the teeth / I spat out three teeth / And I looked up / And I looked up at the poster… / And I looked at Prince Philip / And he was kicking me in the teeth / And the Queen was saying ‘Fuck me again Philip’… / And he said ‘Don’t hit me with that brick. Don’t suck my prick / Poster / Fuck off / Fuck off.”

The voice used on Slug Bait is that of a young Canadian killer, who was serving life for murdering a young girl whilst he was still only a teenager.

“The final track is thee voice of thee DJ yelling at thee AUDIENCE, part of whom had attached thee PA and other audience members to try and stop TG playing anymore. A minor riot. Thee DJ liked TG and is abusing thee drunks. After a couple of minutes he put an Iggy Pop record on to try and pacify everyone.” [Genesis P-Orridge, Nanavesh 3, February 1982]

Track One (47’23”)

00’00” Zyklon B Zombie07’38” Last Exit16’17” Slug Bait23’10” Maggot Life32’09” Mary Jane/Record Contract “Just like the Bay City Rollers, The Rolling Stones and Johnny Rotten, all our songs sound the same”41’47” ‘Tesco Disco’ “If my amplifier was loud enough, I’d make sure it killed everyone in the room including me”42’31” One Note One Life One Purpose “I just want to fuck you all up the bum – anything to wake you up”

Track Two (12’36”)

00’00” One Note One Life One Purpose (cont.)”Oh fuck I’ve gone out of tune”04’30” ‘A Load of Fucking Wankers’09’12” (Recording ends)

===========================================

IRCD37SO36 Club, Berlin, Germany, 8th November 1980.Stereo.

“A short high frequency ‘buzz like’ sound can sometimes be heard during these performances. This sound is present on the original tapes and was most likely caused by [the] presence of a nearby digital PCM machine during the recordings.” “There were technical problems during the taping of this performance which resulted in a shorter than usual 48 minute recording.” [Chris Carter, TG+ notes, August 2003]

Track titles from Funeral in Berlin. Some instrumentals on IRCD36/37 may have one of the following titles: Stained by Dead Horses / Zero’s Death / Nomon / Raudive Bunker Experiment / Denial of Death / Funeral in Berlin / Trade Deficit. Any help on this appreciated.

Ok, so the treatment of The Mamas & the Papas masters and their catalogue over the past decades seems pretty abysmal. Until Sundazed I don’t think anybody was doing anything decent with this material in the CD era and beyond aside from lame comps.

Steve Hoffman tried his hand at remastering some of the singles for a compilation, and while he got it extraordinarily clean sounding, he turned once mono radio singles into hard-panned severe stereo mixes. That move perplexed me and renders the songs pretty unlistenable to boot. I dunno, it’s out there if you want to compare. All the other CDs I’ve heard have similarly abysmal stereo mixes. Yes, I love their voices and harmonies, but I don’t really appreciate the great stomping beat of “Creeque Alley” relegated to somewhere far off in my right ear.

Anyway, by the time Sundazed got their hands on the masters, they were deteriorated to the point where… well, you can hear it for yourself on their reissues. I don’t knock them for it, they did the best they could. There’s some Byrds stuff they put out that suffered a similar fate.

SO, the conclusion I have come to is that there is really no satisfying reissue of The Mamas & the Papas’ albums. You’re stuck with original Dunhill vinyls from the 1960s to hear how this stuff was meant to sound. So that’s what the three M&P albums here are ripped from. I’m totally up for suggestions of what OOP releases sound better… the MCA discs from the 1980s?

Oh, for the record my favorite single LP by them is DELIVER, if you wanted a starting point.

I’m throwing in the excellent Cass Elliot comp for good measure, because I’m obsessed with her lately. “California Earthquake” is one of the best songs ever written. Her cover of The Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls” is pretty stellar also.

Hey, you know that band Tool? How they’re so “edgy” for writing that post-apocalyptic misanthropic nightmare song about how Los Angeles will be swallowed by the ocean? Yeah, Mama Cass wrote that shit in 1968 and shoved it down Middle America’s throat on The Fucking Smothers Brothers. Take your ball and go home, Tool.

By 1967, bossa nova had become quite popular within jazz and traditional pop audiences, yet Frank Sinatra hadn’t attempted any Brazil-influenced material. Sinatra decided to record a full-fledged bossa nova album with the genre’s leading composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim. Arranged by Claus Ogerman and featuring Jobim on guitar and backing vocals, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim concentrated on Jobim’s originals, adding three American classics — “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” “Change Partners,” and “I Concentrate on You” — that were rearranged to suit bossa nova conventions. The result was a subdued, quiet album that used the Latin rhythms as a foundation, not as a focal point. Supported by a relaxed, sympathetic arrangement of muted brass, simmering percussion, soft strings, and Jobim’s lilting guitar, Sinatra turns in an especially noteworthy performance; he has never sounded so subtle, underplaying every line he delivers and showcasing vocal techniques that he never had displayed before. Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim doesn’t reveal its pleasures immediately; the album is too textured and understated to be fully appreciated within one listen. After a few plays, the album begins to slowly work its way underneath a listener’s skin, and it emerges as one of his most rewarding albums of the ’60s.

Watertown is Frank Sinatra’s most ambitious concept album, as well as his most difficult record. Not only does it tell a full-fledged story, it is his most explicit attempt at rock-oriented pop. Since the main composer of Watertown is Bob Gaudio, the author of the Four Seasons’ hits “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” “Walk Like a Man,” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” that doesn’t come as a surprise. With Jake Holmes, Gaudio created a song cycle concerning a middle-aged, small-town man whose wife had left him with the kids. Constructed as a series of brief lyrical snapshots that read like letters or soliloquies, the culminating effect of the songs is an atmosphere of loneliness, but it is a loneliness without much hope or romance — it is the sound of a broken man. Producer Charles Calello arranged musical backdrops that conveyed the despair of the lyrics. Weaving together prominent electric guitars, keyboards, drum kits, and light strings, Calello uses pop/rock instrumentations and production techniques, but that doesn’t prevent Sinatra from warming to the material. In fact, he turns in a wonderful performance, drawing out every emotion from the lyrics, giving the album’s character depth.

At the time Back to Mono was released in 1991, Phil Spector’s reputation as one of pop’s great visionaries was intact, but there was no way to hear his genius. It wasn’t just that there were no collections spotlighting his productions, there weren’t collections of artists he produced. It wasn’t until Back to Mono that there was a thorough overview of Spector’s greatest work, and while it’s not without flaws, it still stands as one of the great box sets. Some may complain that there are no selections from his superstar ’70s productions for John Lennon, George Harrison, Leonard Cohen, and the Ramones, but that’s for the best, since their presence would have been incongruous, taking attention away from the music that forms the heart of Spector’s legacy. All of that music is here, not just on the first three discs, all devoted to singles, but also on the fourth disc, his seminal 1963 holiday album, A Christmas Gift for You, which isn’t just the greatest rock Christmas album, but a crystallization of his skills. It could be argued that the song selection overlooks some obscure fan favorites, such as “Do the Screw,” but that’s simply nitpicking, because what’s here are all the great Spector records, which were hardly just great productions, they were great songs as well. As the set plays, it’s hard not to be stunned by the depth of the material and clarity of Spector’s vision for his famed Wall of Sound, whether you’ve heard these songs hundreds of times or not at all — especially because they gain power when grouped together. Many producers have been credited as the true creative force behind many rock records, but usually that’s hyperbole. In Spector’s case, it wasn’t, as this set gloriously proves.

In the 1960s there were two major Top 40 players in the San Francisco radio market, KYA 1260 and KFRC 1550. They duked it out from around 1965 until the mid-70s, KFRC eventually emerging victorious. Here is roughly five and a half hours of the two stations spread out over their respective fifteen year primes.

You can download FLACs of the recordings by clicking the links under the players or using the arrow buttons on the right side player menus.

Yes, multiupload.com has been up and down the past day or so. But no worries, whenever I use multiupload I always include a couple of the mirrors it creates under the multiupload link. That’s what the “rs” and “mu” and “zs” stuff is about. So in the event multiupload disappears, the mirror uploads remain.

So I’m gonna continue using multiupload while it’s around, because it makes so many mirrors. Sharebee does this too, but the upload speed with them seems prohibitively slow.

In 1996, Oakland’s Pimp Of The Year, no, Pimp Of The Century, Dru Down comes out with a sick album full of bay area fire and funk. With producers like Lev Berlak, DJ Fuze, DJ Daryl, Soopafly (credited by his name Priest Brooks), Battlecat, and a few others, you get a neat mix of Mobb Music and laidback G-Funk (Bay and L.A. inspired), and a plain out good time. Dru Down spits heat throughout and has great guests here too. “Playa Fo Real” is the joint. Battlecat really did up the beat, bouncy G-Funk and a slick whiny synth, one of his most original beats ever, and he is a phat beatsmith. DD gets his mack on nice and smooth. He calls out Too $hort on the mobbed out “Mista Busta” over a syrupy beat. This song contributed to the Luniz, C&H, Dru Down vs. Too Short beef that would prove violent thru ’96 into ’97.

A slappin good time is found on “Heads & Shoulders” with DD gettin it horny, crunk, and disorderly over a “Smurphie’s Dance” sample. The smooth but raunchy sex joint “Freaks Come Out” has a phat, smoked out laidback G-Funk beat with LV (from South Central Cartel/Coolio fame) dropping a hot and smooth hook. Then, we have the bay mobb music joints “500 Mobsters,” and the bangin’ “The Mobb.” This joint is long but tight. The beat is nice and slick with neat keyboard melodies. “Suspect One” is another with more of a laidback beat but harsher rhymes to offset that atmosphere. The title track is cool with a neat coming of age story, but a predictable sample “Can You Feel It.” Another classic is “Underestimated” where Soopafly adds a Long Beach G-Funk bouncy beat and a slick verse about how heads underestimated the 2 rappers. Overall, this album should be in anyone’s collection. A phat album that should never be slept on. This album is smoother than Explicit Game from 2 years earlier and fun and humorous.